If there was any doubt North Korea
had mastered the capacity to build nuclear bombs, it has
been removed. We have clarity.

The effect of North Korea's forced
entry into the nuclear club, joining the United States,
Russia, Britain, China, France, Israel, India and
Pakistan, may be as far-reaching as was Moscow's entry
in 1949.

For Kim Jong-Il now has the ability
to smuggle nuclear devices in the cargo holds of
merchant ships into U.S. ports, or sell atom bombs to
friendly nations like Iran.

He will soon be able to launch
missiles with nuclear warheads onto U.S. forces on the
DMZ and Okinawa.

Given time and the testing of his
long-range rockets, North Korea will one day be able to
bombard the American mainland with atom bombs.

Any such attack would of course
entail the annihilation of his military and regime.
Nevertheless, Pyongyang now has a credible deterrent to
U.S. strikes on its nuclear facilities.

In his
2002 State of the Union, George W. Bush issued a
clear ultimatum to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the
"Axis of Evil": The United States will not allow the
world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the world's
most destructive weapons.

U.S. forces on the DMZ are now as
much hostages to the North Korean military as they are
defenders of the South. It is less credible today than
yesterday that America would launch any pre-emptive
strike on North Korea—with our forces in Pyongyang's
nuclear gun sights.

It is also impossible to believe
the United States, its forces stretched thin by Iraq and
Afghanistan, would send another army of a third of a
million men to fight a land war with North Korea, as we
did over half a century ago.

Why, then, do we keep an army in
South Korea? The only rationale is to ensure that
Americans are killed in any North Korean invasion, and,
thus, that the United States will bring the full force
of its air and naval power against Pyongyang in any such
war.

But why should we maintain an
indefinite commitment to fight a war for South Korea,
when the result could now be escalation involving
nuclear strikes on U.S. forces in the Pacific or the
American homeland?

For over a decade, this writer has
argued
for a withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Korea—because
the Cold War was over, the Soviet Union had broken up
and there was no longer any vital U.S. interest on the
peninsula. And because South Korea, with twice the
population of the North, an economy 40 times as large
and access to U.S. weapons generations ahead of North
Korea's 1950s arsenal, should defend herself.

If we leave now, however, Seoul
will take it as a signal that we are abandoning her to
face a nuclear-armed North.

South Korea will have little choice
but to begin a crash program to build her own nuclear
arsenal.

Yet, as the United States cannot be
forever committed to fight a nuclear-armed North Korea
to defend South Korea, a nuclear-armed South is probably
in the cards. Pyongyang's explosion of Monday is
probably already forcing second thoughts in Seoul about
the necessity of developing its own deterrent.

China is said to be enraged that
North Korea has defied it by detonating a nuclear
device. Beijing should be. For the Chinese-Russian
monopoly on nuclear weapons in North Asia has been
broken. And the democracies there are unlikely to endure
a situation where they can be subjected to missile and
nuclear blackmail by a backward, bellicose little
dictator like Kim Jong-Il.

Japan, a nation of 125 million,
with the second-largest economy on earth and the
technological equal of any nation, will not allow itself
to be blackmailed by this former colony of 20 million
impoverished Koreans.

In securing her against any threat
from Russia or China in the Cold War, Japan relied on
the U.S. nuclear umbrella. But will Japan be willing to
rely on America, and forego her own nuclear deterrent,
if she is threatened by a rogue state like Kim Jong-Il's?

If all three of Japan's closest
neighbors—Russia, China and North Korea—have nuclear
weapons, and U.S. power is receding in Asia, and
American will is being severely tested in Afghanistan
and Iraq, Tokyo will surely have to reconsider the
nuclear option.

Beijing refused to use its enormous
economic leverage to coerce North Korea into giving up
its nuclear program. Now, China may find herself with a
nuclear-armed South Korea,
Japan and perhaps
Taiwan.

As for the United States, the
nuclearization of Asia means it is time to move U.S.
forces back to Guam and, as LBJ said, let
Asian boys do the fighting that Asian boys should be
doing for themselves.